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Thursday, December 16, 2010

Early coffee: Traction, retraction, and self-plagiarism (when scientists retread what they should retire)

"This study reports evidence consistent with the ‘deliberate fraud’ hypothesis. The results suggest that papers retracted because of data fabrication or falsification represent a calculated effort to deceive.":

Med Ethics doi:10.1136/jme.2010.038125

Research ethics

Retractions in the scientific literature: do authors deliberately commit research fraud?

R Grant SteenCorrespondence toR Grant Steen, Medical Communications Consultants LLC, 103 Van Doren Place, Chapel Hill, NC 27517, USA; g_steen_medicc@yahoo.comReceived 31 May 2010Revised 29 July 2010Accepted 13 August 2010Published Online First 15 November 2010AbstractBackground Papers retracted for fraud (data fabrication or data falsification) may represent a deliberate effort to deceive, a motivation fundamentally different from papers retracted for error. It is hypothesised that fraudulent authors target journals with a high impact f actor (IF), have other fraudulent publications, diffuse responsibility across many co-authors, delay retracting fraudulent papers and publish from countries with a weak research infrastructure.

Methods All 788 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Data pertinent to each retracted paper were abstracted from the paper and the reasons for retraction were derived from the retraction notice and dichoto mised as fraud or error. Data for each retracted article were entered in an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

Results Journal IF was higher for fraudulent papers (p<0.001). 2="8.71;">

For comments go here "The highest number of retracted papers were written by US first authors (260), accounting for a third of the total. One in three of these was attributed to fraud.", orhere (An excellent example of either crappy science reporting or crappy science ...), for the view that it's all a bum rap.

One site also offers a number of articles on the shortcomings of peer review. Also an article on self-plagiarism and one on self-plagiarism and bogus authorship.

Self-plagiarism? If I plagiarize myself, can I sue myself?

Self-Plagiarist dies of his pains,When "Been done!" the reviewer complains.He was suing himselfIn a courtroom in Guelph,And his spectre now sues his remains.